“Maybe,” Sela says. “Over here.” She leads Faye to the precipice, which overlooks a rock-lined green pool, clear as glass fishing floats. “We used to come here to swim when I was growing up. After.”
After. Yes. “I never liked swimming. Or boating. After,” Faye says. “Jean was nervous about water. Understandably. This reminds me of Maine, these rock formations, how craggy they are. Imagine Ireland floating across the Atlantic to Maine and docking like puzzle pieces. Then there wouldn’t be this wild and green sea between us. We could walk to each other.” She pauses. “I never imagined you were still here. Or maybe I did. I didn’t know where you were.”
“Somewhere along the line, I lost the fact that you went to Maine. I only remembered America. Like I said, it was fun to think of you there.”
Faye prickles at the word. “Fun. You keep saying it. Was your childhood fun?”
“Was yours?”
“Are you angry with me?” Faye asks.
“You’re the one who seems angry,” Sela says. “And to answer your question, yes, my childhood was fun, eventually. This was my home.” She spreads her arms open to the countryside and sea. “I tried to be two people for the longest time—the self I was inside, a girl who was Elisabeth, and also you, the sister I swore to protect, this girl everyone called Gisela, who I thought I had failed. We got separated, and I thought it was my fault. Maybe it was when Hannie told me she knew about Mutti and that I could stay here with her and Hugh. You kept telling me Mutti was dead. I didn’t want to hear it. I thought if we believed, we could go home eventually—”
“But we didn’t have a home.”
“I know that, Faye! But I was foolish. Then you were gone, and the sun came up anyway. Every single day! It dawned on me that no one here expected anything of me. Hannie and Hugh were kind and good, but I didn’t owe them anything.”
“How liberating for you,” Faye says.
“Youaremad!”
Faye breathes in this place, tries to bring the memory back. Fish smells, seaweed and algae on the shore. She imagines it like she is watching it happen. She hits the gunwale, tumbles under water, churning in her own bubbles. She surfaces, choking. Elisabeth is on the boat, but it is Fiadh who jumps in, Fiadh who saves her. A seahorse. Not her sister. She is pulled onto a boat deck, taken ashore. The coughing. Her lungs ache. A crowd has gathered. “I’m not mad. But I think I was. I told William the story of the accident as if I was Fiadh. I told him about foolish German girls and how careless Fiadh was standing up like that. Do you remember that you coughed like you’d fallen overboard too? I thought I was going to drown, and you pretended you almost did. You didn’t save me. Youcouldn’tsave me. Fiadh did. In so many ways.”
“Do you want me to thank you for being the one the Beattys took? Is that it?” Sela’s face collapses. “Are you trying to punish me? I did everything I could.”
They are the same height, the same build. Faye suspects they even smell the same. But they are not the same person. They never were. “I know you did,” she whispers. “And so did I.” Faye wonders how she will ever stop crying. “I have to tell you something.” She looks back at the remains of the cottages, crumbled by time and neglect. “It wasn’t only Jean and Hannie who cooked up the plan. I think I was the one who put the idea of a switch into their heads in the first place. And then, when you went to sleep, I snuck out, and I told them to take me instead of you. That’s why your name is on the death certificate. They planned to take you.”
Sela pushes away, her face childlike with shock. “What?”
“We were trying to survive! All of it weighed on me! I was afraid to go back to Germany. And I couldn’t stay here either. I felt so guilty. Fiadh’s drowning. I could feel her on my hands!” Faye gasps then, Molly’s words coming out of her own mouth, the burden of a death that they both carried. “We were only children. Too young for war.”
“But didn’t you wonder what leaving would do to me?”
“I knew you would never stop fighting. Yes, that I knew.” Faye closes her eyes. “I’m sure I thought I was doing what was right, giving everyone some glimmer of hope in a hopeless, desperate situation. And I was drawn to Jean and her sadness, if you want to know the truth. Even before Fiadh died. Something in me needed to feel all her pain.” Faye flashes on Molly, that leather jacket, and the day Thomas died. How like her Molly turned out to be. If only Faye had seen it sooner. “And I saw Thomas ...” Faye’s voice cracks then. “The way he held Fiadh that day, the gentleness in him, like our own father. I missed him so much. Vati was never cut out for such a brutal war.”
“I was heartbroken without you,” Sela says. “And this breaks my heart again. I did everything I could think of to keep us safe. Did you mean to betray me?”
“No! No! I know what you were trying to do. But that wasn’t your job. I tried to make you understand. About Mutti. About our cousin and how he was hurting me. I was impulsive and selfish. But you were naïve.” Faye takes the worn photograph out of her pocket. She’s told Sela the story already, how all their secrets came to light. “Look at this again. We look so much alike. We still do. But we’re not the same. You can see it in our expressions. Even then we looked at the world through different lenses. We had different survivor instincts. You wanted to fight. I wanted wings.” She thinks of that war book again, the one with the children. “It was war that made these girls who they were, who we’ve become. I’m so sorry. Please, Elisabeth. Sela. Please forgive me.”
Sela steps back from the edge and onto the path they’d walked. Her chest rises and falls, her breaths purposeful and deep. “Ask me again if my childhood was fun,” she says.
Faye takes two steps toward her. “Was your childhood fun?” she whispers.
Sela’s chin quivers as she struggles to speak. “I do not want to talk about this! I don’t. I never did. This is not me. But the truth is that without you, I was not constantly reminded of Germany. Without you, I could stop pretending Mutti was alive. I know what you saw. I saw it, too, sister. I saw Mutti run toward us. I saw the truck hit her.”
“But you said—”
“You were constantly telling me she was dead. I was trying to keep her alive for both of us, don’t you understand? And, by the way, I knew what Herbert was doing to you. It was me who told Uncle to send us to the orphanage. I thought we would be safer there. I thought it was my job to be hopeful for you. That was stupid of me. But you made everything so hard! I’ve always looked for the bright side.”
“And I’ve always lived in fear.”
“Yes, and so because we were separated, I did have a good childhood. And I am a happy woman now, despite the sadness in my life. As I play things out in my head, I never would have forgiven the Beattys if they’d taken me, like I never forgave them for taking you. But it’s what happened, isn’t it? Us girls were not meant to stay together after all. Was it a boating accident or was it war that came between us? I don’t know. I let you go a long time ago.”
“If only Conor had told me the truth.” Faye shakes her head, the disgust surfacing with a sudden image of Conor O’Kane splayed out on the floor.
“If he’d told you the truth, who knows if you would have had your life with William, if you’d have your girls and grandchildren. And from your telling it, your relationship with Thomas Beatty, your father, was quite lovely. How lucky for you, Faye! No, this is the way it went. There was no other way.”
“Can you ever forgive me?” Faye asks.
